Oh, Boy! I'm a Time Lord!
by HumanTales
Summary: Two different forms of incompatible energy existing in the same space-time would create havoc, wouldn't it? What would they have to put right? Spoilers through Torchwood Children of Earth.


**Oh Boy, I'm a Time Lord**

**Prologue**

Sam shook his head to clear it of the normal post-Leap disorientation. In front of him was a console that looked like it was for some kind of computerized system. The metal was bronze, some of the components were of the same metal, but others were . . . improvised. The readouts were incomprehensible-all circles within circles. Sam thought that if he could just have some time, he might be able to figure them out; he thought they were mathematical rather than linguistic.

Finally, in the center of the console was a tall, translucent cylinder. It was lit from below by a green light, and had been coming to a stop as Sam Leaped in. Since he could sense other people in the room, he stayed still and waited to see what was happening.

"So, Doctor, where are we now?" a young woman said as she laid her hand on his arm. Sam looked over at her. She was a pretty, very young woman, early twenties at most, with dyed blonde hair and big, brown, worried eyes. "Is something wrong?"

"Uh, think I hit my head when we . . . just give me a minute," Sam said, giving the woman a distracted smile and turning back to the incomprehensible console.

"That wasn't even one of your rougher landings," said the man to his left. Sam had been playing ostrich, hoping that if he ignored him, the other man would return the favor.

Glancing to his left, Sam got an impression of a man of about his height, quite a bit younger than himself, though still older than the woman, extremely handsome and dressed down in T-shirt and jeans. "Sometimes it's the smooth ones you have to watch out for," Sam muttered. Where was Al? He was lost here; there were no clues to help him out.

The other man chuckled. "Good one, Doctor," he said, as the woman said, "Jack? Something's wrong . . ."

"Rose?" Jack said, a question implied that Sam didn't understand. Then Jack grabbed Sam and nearly threw him away from the console. Stepping back out of range of fists or kicks, Jack smoothly pulled a gun from behind himself and aimed it straight at Sam. A moment ago Jack had looked like decoration, a pretty boy; now, he looked like a trained soldier. "Who are you," Jack asked Sam, "and what have you done with the Doctor?"

"Oh, boy," Sam groaned, hoping that Al would hurry up. When the guns came out this early, it was usually trouble.

**Chapter One**

Standing outside the Waiting Room, Al gave Beeks a tired look. This part was never easy; the people Sam Leaped into were blindsided by something completely outside their experience. At least half the time they thought they'd been kidnapped by aliens and, even if they didn't think that, they were nearly always frightened. Al couldn't blame them for that, but it was exhausting to calm them down. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

Not one of the ones who were frozen in fear, the Visitor was carefully examining the Waiting Room and muttering to himself. When the door opened, he stood up and whirled around. After far too many bad experiences, the door closed too quickly for him to escape, but that didn't seem to bother him. He gave Al and Beeks a big grin. "Hi! I'm the Doctor, and I'm up to five questions. Shall we get to them before I come up with more?"

The grin was contagious; Beeks was smiling as much as Al was. "Doctor," he greeted the Visitor, "I can't promise anything, but I'll do my best."

"Fantastic! Where am I; are my friends all right; what's with the jammies; where's my screwdriver; what are you lot doing with time around here?" After the questions came out in one big rush, he stood still, looking at Al and Beeks for his answers. Al noticed that he was keeping his weight on the balls of his feet, ready to move in an instant.

Hoping he'd stay cooperative, Al answered. "First, I can't tell you exactly where you are. What I can tell you is that you're accidentally involved with a government research project. We need you to stay here until we can return you to your life; that usually only takes a couple of days."

The grin had faded. "What's the longest?"

Damn. "A couple of months, but that was very unusual circumstances." Yeah, it wasn't like Sam to get a break and actually relax into a Leap; he had to keep moving, keep adjusting. Hoping to keep a positive spin on things, and trying not to think of everything that could, and had, gone wrong, Al continued. "As far as your friends go, what happened to you wouldn't affect them at all. I can't guarantee they're safe-they could get hit by a bus or something-but they're not in danger from us." Usually.

The Visitor nodded. He didn't look upset, so Al relaxed. A little. "The 'jammies', and I like that one," Al said with his best ingratiating grin, "just make everything a whole lot easier, so we have to ask you to indulge us. If you're uncomfortable, we'll do what we can to make you comfortable."

"I'm just glad the Captain's not here right now," the Visitor said, sounding amused. "Kinda feeling a bit on display." He was grinning again, to Al's relief.

Beeks held up her finger. "Just a minute, gentlemen." She poked her head out the door and spoke to one of the guards standing outside. A minute later, she said, "Thank you," to the guard. She turned back to Al and the Visitor holding a lab coat, which she handed to the Visitor. He put the coat on and waited.

Right. Three down and two to go, including that one lulu. "As far as your screwdriver goes," Al said, "it should be right where you left it." He shrugged. "Is there something special about it?"

"Yeah, but I wouldn't expect you to understand it," the Visitor said. He was now leaning against the wall, his face neutral.

"As far as your last question goes…" Al had been about to claim ignorance, but something about the Visitor made him think that was a bad idea. "It's classified," he said instead. "Now, I'm Al and this is Verbeena. We have a couple of questions for you and then she'd like to check you over and make sure you're all right medically. I doubt she'll find anything, but we don't want any surprises there."

"You can ask your questions," the Visitor said, smirking, "but I don't guarantee any better answers than you had for me. I'll try to be as honest, anyway."

That was about the answer Al had been expecting. "First of all, you're a doctor; that's great. What's your name? Y'know, for when you have to fill out forms and such. I promise, we won't cause you any trouble, and you'll never hear from us again once you've gone home."

"Y'couldn't," the Visitor said. "Like I said, you can call me the Doctor." He gave Al an amused look. "Ask UNIT about me. If they'll answer you." Then he sighed. "When I have to fill out forms, I usually use John Smith.

"Who's UNIT?" Beeks asked.

"Later," Al said. That wasn't good news; he really didn't want to get involved with the UN. "OK, where were you?"

"Don't know," the Doctor said. Before Al could object, he held up his hands. "I was aiming for Haight-Ashbury, summer of '67, Jack really wanted to see the Summer of Love, but I don't know if I made it. Your super-secret government project interfered."

Before Al could delve into that answer, Ziggy spoke up. "Dr. Beeks, can you please examine the Visitor? I need some supporting data."

The Doctor was smirking again. "Got through to UNIT, did you? You planning on doing anything more than listen to my heart and lungs?" he asked Beeks.

"And take your blood pressure," she said, taking her stethoscope and blood pressure gear from her pockets. "Why don't you have a seat?"

"Why don't you just have a listen first," the Doctor said. "Nothing else'll make sense until you do."

It didn't make any sense, now, but he was still being sort of cooperative, so Beeks indulged him. After listening for a second, she frowned and moved the stethoscope to the other side of the Doctor's chest. She moved the stethoscope back and forth for a minute, her eyes getting wider. The Doctor was now lounging back, with a self-satisified look on his face. "Ziggy," Beeks finally said, "should I expect to hear two hearts?"

"What?" Al shouted as Ziggy answered, "According to UNIT's top-secret archives, an entity known as the Doctor is an alien with two hearts and many faces. They note that, when required to give a name, the one he most often chooses is John Smith, although he has used several other aliases in the past."

Trying to pull enough information out of that to be useful, Al asked, "Many faces? You're a shapeshifter?" he asked the Doctor. "Ziggy, ally or enemy?"

"Ally," Ziggy answered. "In fact, he was employed by UNIT as a consultant for several years."

"Yep," the Doctor confirmed. "And I'm not a shapeshifter. The many faces trick, well, it only happens when I'm dying. So I'd prefer not to demonstrate it, if it's all the same to you."

"Admiral," Ziggy butted in again, "the records also note that his dimensionally transcendent ship can travel in both space and time."

Al and Beeks looked at the Doctor, stunned. The Doctor grinned more widely than he'd managed yet and said, "Yep. I'm a Time Lord."

*

"I am the Doctor," Sam said, hoping Al would hurry up and get here with some useful information. "Why would I do anything with myself?"

"'Snot him," Rose insisted. "Don't ask me to explain it, but he feels wrong. Jack-"

"Pretty snazzy substitution," Jack said, his gun not moving, "but you feel wrong to Rose, and I never doubt a lady's word on such things," he said over his shoulder to Rose. "Intuition can be much more accurate than reason in these matters. So," he turned back to Sam, "where is he?"

Al was showing no signs of showing up and Sam really wanted that gun to go away. Jack's blue eyes were the cold eyes of a predator defending its pack, not someone Sam wanted to mess with. "He's fine," Sam finally said, reasonably sure that was true. "I'm really not supposed to say any more." He thought a minute. "I don't even remember, right now, where he is, but it's somewhere very safe, I promise."

"What do you want to give him back?" Rose wailed.

"You'll get him back once I've done what I have to do," Sam said. "In the meantime, he's being kept comfortable, well-fed, all his needs met."

"So, what do you have to do?" Jack asked. The gun was still aimed straight at Sam's head.

"I don't know," Sam said, sighing. "Yet. As soon as Al gets here-"

"Al?" both Rose and Jack chorused.

"My friend." Sam sighed; they really weren't going to like this. "You, er, won't be able to see him, but he'll come, I'll put right what I have to, and you'll get your friend back again. Safe and sound."

"Put right," Jack said, clearly trying to remember something. "I've heard that before."

"So've I," said Rose, "but it just means to fix something."

"No," Jack was shaking his head. Then, catching Rose's look, he said, "Well, yes, it does mean that, but I've heard it as part of a quote. In the Academy, in a history lesson, what was it?" Looking frustrated, he looked at Sam again, "Is that part of a, let's see, mission statement or something."

"Just what Ziggy thinks I have to do to get home. Or at least Leap-" Sam didn't get to finish his thought. Again.

"Leap?" Jack asked, his eyes widening. "Project Quantum Leap? That's it, 'put right what once went wrong'; you're Sam Beckett?"

To Sam's relief, his gun had dropped, but the ramifications of Jack's knowledge was chilling. Before he could say anything, Rose asked, "Y'mean the playwright? That guy who wrote that crazy play?"

"No," Jack said, putting his gun away, "and I know better. Dr. Beckett, please forget that I said anything and let me know if I can be of any assistance to you." His stance was still that of a soldier, standing at attention, but his eyes were shining.

As Sam said, "I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing," Rose said, "Know better than what?"

Jack answered Rose first. "Timelines, Rose. I know the Doctor's explained how important they are, and how important it is to prevent paradox. So I really can't say anything else to Dr. Beckett. I'll explain to you what I know later." He turned to Sam. "I'm from your future, sir. In the meantime, how do you usually determine your mission?"

Sam made a face at the military terminology, but saw no reason not to answer. "We, that's Al and I, figure out where I am, who I Leaped into, and who I'm with and go from there."

Jack nodded. "Al would be-" He cut himself off. "Never mind. How does he know where, and when, to find you?"

"When?" Rose asked. "So he's a time traveler, too?"

"Please hold your questions till later, sweetheart," Jack said with a smile to Rose. "I can't answer them right now. Yes, Sam's a time traveler, but he works a little differently than we do. So?" He turned back to Sam.

"Al talks to the Visitor, back at the site," Sam answered. "And we're linked with the computer somehow, so I think sometimes they use that. See, he's not supposed to tell me what's going on back home, and my memory's a little Swiss-cheesed as a result of Leaping, so I'm not sure of all the details."

"Right," Jack nodded. "Something tells me that the TARDIS interfered with your Leap; two different forms of probably incompatible temporal energy? So, let's find out where and when we are and see if we can't figure it out."

"Where and when?" Sam asked.

"Er, yeah, this is the TARDIS," Rose said. "That stands for Time And Relative Distance In Space, and she's the Doctor's ship. She travels in time and space. It's wonderful!" Her smile was huge, but it drooped almost immediately. "You're sure the Doctor's all right?" she asked.

"Positive," Sam said, giving her his best reassuring smile. "The worst that can happen to him is his getting bored."

Rose winced and Jack sighed. "That could be a problem," Rose said. "He gets into the worst trouble when he's bored."

"We'll let them worry about the Doctor," Jack said. "We have a mission to figure out."

Rose returned Jack's grin and bounded down a ramp to a door. Sam assumed it went to the outside. As he started to follow, he heard the Imaging Chamber's door open behind him.

*

Time Lord! Traveler in time and space! Of all the crazy, cockamamie Leaps Sam had gotten himself into, this one took the cake! Al fumed as he strode to the Imaging Chamber. They were going to try to center Al on Sam without having any idea where he was. It was too much to hope that someone who called himself a Lord of Time would know where he'd been! Or at least where his ship was. Damn whatever it was Leaping Sam around Time.

Before Al could get to his destination, with the Doctor trailing along behind, because God forbid he act like a normal person and stay in the Waiting Room, Beeks put out her hand and stopped him. He turned to glare at her and found her holding a bottle of water and some aspirin. "Although I think a sedative might be better," she said, her smile fond.

"Thanks, Beeks," Al said as he took the aspirin. "This one's going to be a doozy."

"Amazing how you apes figure all this out," the Doctor said, his eyes taking in everything. "Your Dr. Beckett's a genius, and from me that means something. Haveta ask, though; why don't you bring him home?"

"We can't," Al told him, sighing. "When he Leaped the first time, we weren't quite ready and everything went a little . . . kaka. We're not giving up on him," he told the alien firmly.

"Course not," the Doctor said. "You apes, you never give up. "It's why I like Earth so much; stupid, persistent apes."

"Doctor," Beeks said, before Al could turn around and punch him in the nose, "is it necessary to refer to us as apes? We're not calling you an alien, or anything derogatory."

"Who says 'ape' is derogatory?" the Doctor answered. "It's what y'are. Clever apes who couldn't be kept in the trees. Or anywhere else, really. Ooooh, is that your control console?" He went over to Gooshie and Tina and started asking questions a mile a minute. Al thought he'd get more answers if anyone could understand the questions.

"Any luck, Gooshie?" Al asked.

Gooshie shrugged. "I think so, but we're getting some really strange readings. Hopefully it'll be better when you're in there."

Al nodded and headed for the Imaging Chamber. The Doctor appeared to have noticed, because he came up beside Al. "Am I right that I can see if I'm touching you?"

Al nodded, feeling tired. Project Quantum Leap was Top Secret, Eyes Only, Nobody's Supposed To Know. Except for big-eared, too-cheerful aliens, apparently. "Sure, why the hell not?"

It took a while. After the first few minutes, Gooshie asked the Doctor to leave the Imaging Chamber until they found Sam, because he was screwing up the readings. Then Al got to watch the scenery rolling around him while they tried to get a fix on Sam. It wasn't as bad as the time Sam had Leaped without there ever being a Visitor, but it came a close second.

"I think we've got it, Admiral," Gooshie finally said.

The whirling images finally stopped, but it took a minute for Al to concentrate on what he was seeing. The room they were in was huge, larger even the Project Quantum Leap's control room, and round. The support beams looked like bronze coral, almost organic. There was a column in the center that was the only illumination in the room, a weird, green light. The control panel itself, in the middle of the room, was made of that same bronze coral stuff, except where it was made of second-hand stuff. The combination was weird, but it somehow made the room less terrifying than Al thought it might have been otherwise.

There were three people leaving the room through what looked like an outside door: a man and a woman that Al didn't recognize, and Sam trailing behind. Before Al could say anything, he heard the Imaging Chamber door open behind him, and the Doctor say, "Wait! I want to see."

**Chapter Two**

Sam turned and saw, to his relief, Al standing there looking around the room with a great deal of interest. A second later, a tall man with very short dark hair and big ears was standing beside Al, with his hand on Al's shoulder and grinning like a maniac.

Rose stopped at the doorway and turned. "C'mon, Sam; there's a whole new world, well time, to explore."

Jack looked at Sam, his eyes narrowing. "Getting the mission?" he asked.

Sam closed his eyes as Al squawked. "I hope." He gave Al his best pleading look. "Al?"

"This is the screwiest Leap ever, and there've been some screwy ones. Why the hell'd you tell 'em anything?"

"Because I didn't want to be shot," Sam said, his jaw tightening. "Because Rose could tell that I wasn't her Doctor the second I Leaped in and Jack backed her up. What. Do. We. Know?"

The man hanging onto Al's shoulder, who was probably Rose's and Jack's friend, starting saying something, and Al gave him a brief synopsis. That started the man yelling at Jack. "Just a second, Sam. Look, they can't see or hear you, remember? Wait until you're back before you start complaining about the guns, OK?" He turned back to Sam, shaking his head, "Sheesh! OK, you've Leaped into an alien, a Time Lord to be precise, who everybody calls the Doctor. We don't know where you are or-"

The Doctor clearly said something to Al that made him roll his eyes and move toward the console in the middle of the room. "You wouldn't think a ship from outer space would use a bicycle pump," he muttered as the Doctor led him to one of the screens. The Doctor rolled his eyes and said something that Al ignored, but he repeated the next words, "OK, Sam, we've got you. It's February 19, 1965 and you're in Glasgow, Scotland."

"And it's cold out!" Rose said, suddenly shutting the door. "I'm getting my coat."

Jack grinned. "I'll bet the Doctor's saying something about not being that far off course," he said as he followed her.

Al gave Sam a grin and a nod, while the Doctor looked injured. "Sam, who are your friends, especially the lovely ow!"

The last came from the Doctor smacking Al, which made Sam grin. He tried to hide it, but it was kind of fun to see Al get stopped from making his normal lecherous comments. To be supportive, Sam said, "This is Rose and the gentleman over there is Jack. I don't know last names; presumably the Doctor does."

"Oh, no," Rose said, "I'm sorry, Sam. We got kind of distracted. I'm Rose Tyler and this is Cap'n Jack."

"Captain Jack Harkness, at your service," Jack said, with a small bow and a wink.

The Doctor made a comment that Al relayed, "He says to make sure Jack buys you a drink first." He smacked the interface and opened his mouth to say something. The Doctor suddenly looked worried and dropped his hand. A minute later the Imaging Chamber door opened and closed. "He just said something about not wanting to create a paradox. It's not like Ziggy knows that much. Rose Tyler, born April 27, 1987, in London, England to Peter Tyler and Jacquelyn Prentice Tyler. She dies or disappears, the records contradict each other, during the terrorist attack on Canary Wharf. Which according to this was an alien invasion, which got stopped by the Doctor."

"So, we're in Rose's past?" Sam asked.

"The TARDIS is," Rose said. "I'm in my present. Timelines get messy when you travel in time."

"You should see mine," Jack said, laughing.

"Ziggy doesn't have much on the Captain, there," Al said, glaring at the interface and banging it into his hand. "There's a restricted file on him in UNIT's computers; Ziggy hasn't managed to get into it, but it references some group called The Torchwood Institute. She's working on it." Al shrugged. "No idea why you're here now."

"So finding a nice warm coat and going exploring with my new friends makes sense?" Sam asked. He was so tired of this; never enough information, always surviving by the skin of his teeth.

"Sounds as good as anything," Al agreed. "Me, I'd stay in and get close to Miss Tyler over there."

"Good-bye, Al," Sam said, rolling his eyes as Jack walked back wearing a pea coat and wool hat pulled down around his ears. He was carrying a second coat with him.

"Here, I thought you'd need this," he said, holding it out to Sam. "Himself wears the same thing no matter what, but we apes need warmer clothes in the bitter cold. So, why were you rolling your eyes?"

"No matter how serious things get," Sam said, shaking his head and smiling, "Al always has his eyes on the pretty girls."

"He'd better watch that around the Doctor," Jack said, laughing. "He's pretty protective of Rose. First night I was here, he gave me a list of airlock offenses."

"What?"

"Offenses that would get me shoved out the airlock," Jack clarified, "while still in vacuum. Anyway, the first one was 'Hurt Rose in any way, shape or form.' Fortunately, Rose is a sweetheart, so I'd sooner jump into the airlock myself than hurt her. So, Al limits himself to just the ladies?"

"Most men do," Sam said. When was Jack from?

"And most ladies limit themselves to the boys? Such silly labels; much more fun to enjoy it all," Jack said. "So, Rose should be along any minute; she decided to change clothes altogether instead of just getting a coat. Did Al have any idea why you're here?" When Sam shook his head, Jack shrugged, "So we take in the sights while we wait. Do you have to know what you're here to do?"

"No, but those Leaps are . . . hard," Sam said with a sigh. "I'm really hoping this isn't one of them."

Jack bit his lip for a moment. It was the first time Sam had seen him uncertain about anything. "Can you tell me about some of the Leaps?" Before Sam could answer, he said, "You don't have to tell about anything sensitive; I'm not looking for secrets or anything. You can tell me about the ones that seem insignificant, or fun, or whatever; I'm just curious. I-- Damn, I wish-- Well, I wish things were different."

Before Sam could say anything, Rose came out dressed for cold. "So, are we ready?"

Sam put his coat on and followed the other two out. "So, do you want funny, scary or awful stories?"

Jack's grin was huge and Rose laughed. "Funny," Rose said as Jack said, "Strange." So, as they went out to brave the cold and poke around, Sam told them some of the favorite stories he could remember of his different Leaps.

*

Al walked out of the Imaging Chamber. He talked with Gooshie for a little bit about getting into UNIT's computers and finding out more about this Torchwood Institute. During his conversation, he noticed that the Doctor was staying out of hearing distance and concentrating on the computer. So, when he finished talking with Gooshie, he went to the Doctor. "So, why'd you leave?"

"Timelines," the Doctor answered, as he pulled up the schematics for Ziggy's design.

"Hey! You're not supposed to access to that!" Al said, looking around for a quick, safe way to stop the alien.

Ziggy's voice purred over the intercom, "But he asked so nicely, Admiral."

The Doctor smirked at him. "I can treat a lady right, me," he said, "and she's a very interesting lady." As his expression turned serious, he said, "I can't get involved in this Leap thing any more, so I'm tryin' to keep occupied. Make sure everything's in top shape."

"What's wrong? You were interested before."

"I'm a Time Lord," the Doctor said with a sigh. "That means I can see timelines, everyone's timelines, all the time. It also means I can tell when I'm about to cross my own timeline." He shrugged. "There's times when it's all right, and times when it can't be avoided, but it's better not to. Whatever the information Ziggy was telling you, about Rose or Jack or me, I can't know about it. Not without creating a paradox. One that'd mean Reapers and -- Well, there's just me. I might not be able to fix it."

Al took a moment to think it through. "So, before I said anything, you knew that knowing what I was about to say would cause a paradox so you left so you wouldn't know what you're not supposed to know until it's time for you to know."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "You had fun saying that, didn't you?"

Al grinned back. "You'd better believe it. Any way can you clear things for me with UNIT or this Torchwood Institute place?"

"Might be able to help with UNIT," the Doctor said, staring at the schematics on the display. "Now, why'd you do a silly thing like that?" he muttered. "Don't know anything about this Torchwood Institute, and I can't. Let UNIT know I'm working with you; I'll give you the ID codes if you need 'em. Otherwise," he glared at the display, "find the original designs for this computer and all the changes that've been made to her. I've got a lot of work to do."

The first thing Al did was to ask Tina to keep the Doctor happy, entertained, and out of trouble.

"Can I keep him entertained however I like?" Tina asked as she checked the Doctor out.

The scraps of memory Al had from before Sam had put his own life right made it hard not to react, except to shake his head and snort. "Just as long as he doesn't leave. You know we never know when Sam's gonna Leap." After a moment's thought, he added, "And he wants to." Why he wouldn't want to was beyond Al, but it could happen.

After making several calls to England, first to confirm the Doctor's security clearances, and then to ask for more access to UNIT's computers, Al started digging for information on this Torchwood Institute. Hours later, his head pounding, he looked at his handlink. "Ziggy," he asked, "how are you doing getting information on this Torchwood Institute?"

"Poor Mainframe doesn't have anyone to talk to," Ziggy said. "He's very lonely."

"And Mainframe is?" Al asked, searching his desk for an aspirin.

"Torchwood's main computer," Ziggy answered. "He was hurt in the attack at Canary Wharf, and hurt more when they bombed the Cardiff facility, but he likes having someone to talk to. I haven't convinced him to give me the information we need yet, but he wants to make his Director happy. If we can stop Captain Jack Harkness from leaving Earth, Director Gwen Cooper will be much happier."

There wasn't enough aspirin in the world for this. Al sighed. "Do we know why Harkness left?"

"His partner and his grandson died," Ziggy said. "Mainframe's not sure which was most important."

Grandson. It must have been a while for Harkness. "How old is Harkness?"

It took Ziggy a couple of minutes to answer. "According to Mainframe, he's either 178 or 2,052, depending on how it's calculated." She paused for a minute. "He also claims he's human."

Not. Enough. Aspirin. "How long will it be before you'll know why Sam Leaped into the Doctor?"

"According to my calculations, Dr. Beckett wasn't supposed to Leap into the Doctor. The temporal energy of the TARDIS interfered with the Leap."

"Who was he supposed to Leap into?" Al asked. How much trouble were they in?

"Captain Jack Harkness."

"Right." Al took a deep breath and let it out as slowly as he could. "How long until you know what Sam needs to do."

"I calculate there will be enough time for you to have a home-cooked meal and for me to interrupt you and Mrs. Cal--"

Al hit the mute button; Ziggy had been getting worse lately. He sighed; they all had.

He let Tina know he was going home, and that he'd be back as soon as Ziggy had some answers. He didn't think Sam could get into too much trouble in a couple of hours.

*

Sam didn't think just walking out of the TARDIS would be too much of a problem, as long as they hadn't landed in a public space. It turned out they hadn't, they were in an alley, but walking out was causing Sam a big problem. Actually, walking out wasn't the problem; it was looking back.

Behind him was the TARDIS. It looked kind of like an opaque blue phone booth, with a sign on top that said, "Police Public Call Box". Sam, Jack and Rose had fit in the TARDIS, with plenty of extra room around them. Lots of extra room, and there had been other rooms beyond that. The structure behind him was less than six feet wide on a side.

Jack and Rose had only taken a few steps when they realized that Sam wasn't with them. "Problem, Doctor?" Rose asked, her voice teasing.

"We couldn't, how did we, there's no way--"

Jack didn't let Sam finish. "It's dimensionally transcendent," he said. He let Sam stare at him for a minute before he said, "It's bigger on the inside." Rose started giggling.

"I need a measuring tape," Sam said, walking back into the TARDIS.

"I think the physicist just woke up," Jack said with a laugh. He grabbed Sam's arm and pulled him out of the TARDIS. "We'll see if we can find a measuring tape somewhere. In the meantime, let's check out the city."

Exploring the city with Jack and Rose was fun. Since they weren't looking for anything in particular, and didn't have to be anywhere anytime in particular, they could just wander. So wandering was what they did. In talking to Rose and Jack, Sam found out that that's mostly what they did. They'd land somewhere, either where they planned or not, and they'd check the place out.

"Sometimes, it's just wonderful," Rose said. "The beauties and wonders of the universe. I've seen things—" She trailed off and shivered. "The universe is so much more than I ever dreamed. Then there's other times when—" This time she seemed to be trying to be diplomatic.

"The Doctor attracts trouble," Jack said. "I haven't been traveling with him as long as Rose has, but it's clear. If there's a repressive government that needs overthrowing or an alien invasion to stop—"

"Or a virus that's going to kill everybody, or a conman who's about to destroy a species—" Rose was grinning at Jack, who looked guilty. "Well, like as not, that's where we'll land. And the Doctor can't keep out of it; 'snot the way he's built."

"So," Sam said, "it sounds like you've got stories that are even better than mine. Tell me some of them; the ones that won't destroy timelines, of course." Rose and Jack laughed, and did just that.

They did check out the Castle, but mostly they just wandered through the streets, watching the people and trying to figure out what they were doing and where they were going. It was nice and relaxing; something Sam didn't get very often. With both Jack and Rose knowing who he was, he didn't have to keep track of anything; he could just be himself and explore a city he didn't remember ever having visited.

They'd just started talking about what they wanted to eat when Sam heard the Imaging Chamber door open again. "Sam, back to the TARDIS," Al said, his face grim. "We have to talk."

**Chapter Three**

Fortunately for Al's nerves, Ziggy's prediction was a little off. He and Beth were just finishing dinner when Ziggy's voice came through the handlink. "I believe we know what Dr. Beckett is supposed to do."

Al kissed Beth. "I'll see you later, sweetheart," he said as he left.

"Good luck," she said.

Once he'd started driving back, Al said, "What do you have for me?"

"It appears that Dr. Beckett was supposed to Leap into Captain Jack Harkness just outside of Edinburgh in February 1965," Ziggy said. "Because of the TARDIS traveling nearby in space and time, he was pulled off course and landed in the Doctor instead."

"Right," Al said. "You already told me this; go on."

"No, Admiral," Ziggy said "You and I both thought that meant the Jack Harkness who is currently traveling with the Doctor in his TARDIS. That is incorrect. He was supposed to Leap into the Captain Jack Harkness who is currently living in 1965. He was a consultant for the Torchwood Institute from 1899 until January 1, 2000, at which time he became the Director of Torchwood Three in Cardiff, Wales. He continued in that role until just under a year ago, at which time he resigned and, apparently, has left the Earth."

Al stared at the handlink. "You're not making any sense."

"According to the Torchwood Institute's main computer, and confirmed by UNIT's files, the Captain Jack Harkness who was once a companion of the Doctor cannot die."

"Ziggy--"

"There is sufficient documentation to confirm that Harkness is both human and, if not actually immortal, practically so. There have been experiments conducted on him--"

"You mean some scientist tried to kill him to see if he'd survive?" Al asked, horrified.

"Actually, they successfully killed him and confirmed that he would resuscitate," Ziggy said. Before Al could ask, Ziggy continued, "It is a misnomer that he cannot be killed. He simply does not stay dead. The list of ways in which he has been killed is extensive."

Al stared at the road. Finally, he said, "What does Sam need to do?"

*

Once he'd returned to the project, Al stopped in the computer room to talk with the Doctor. "What do you know about Harkness?"

"The Captain?" the Doctor asked, looking amused. "Just a 51st century conman and former Time Agent. Why?" Before Al could answer, the Doctor said, "No, don't tell me. Be careful, but ask what you need to know."

Al thought about it. "Is he human?"

"Yep." The Doctor went on to say, "Almost 95 percent, which is pretty good for his time."

"Which is the 51st century?" Al asked.

"So he said, and I've no reason to doubt him."

"Why is he on Earth now?"

"Because this is where the TARDIS is," the Doctor answered. "Look, I picked him up in 1941, where he was causing all sorts of trouble. Without really meaning to; he's a good kid at heart. He's been traveling with Rose and me for, oh, a few months now."

Al took a deep breath. "Can he die?"

The Doctor looked up sharply from the schematics he was examining. Al could see that they were the schematics of the Imaging Chamber. "Of course he can die!" the alien snapped. "Where'd that come from?"

Thinking quickly, Al shrugged, "Y'know, being from that far in the future and all--"

The Doctor shook his head. "Nope. Mortal as you."

Al continued on to the Imaging Chamber. He was now pretty sure why the Doctor refused to listen to what Ziggy was turning up: Harkness's immortality was in his future. "Center me on Sam, Gooshie." Smiling a little at the sight that Harkness, Rose and Sam made discussing dinner, Al sighed. "Sam, back to the TARDIS," he said, feeling tired. "We have to talk."

It took a few minutes to get Sam into the TARDIS and off by himself. First, there was the end of the debate about what to eat. Then, there was the problem of how to buy it, since none of the three of them had contemporary money. Sam eventually found a few pounds in his jacket, and they headed back to the TARDIS. Harkness and Rose were laughing and joking around, but Sam had picked up on Al's mood and was quiet. Once they got into the TARDIS, Sam asked Rose for a place he and Al could talk privately.

"Ask the TARDIS for a room," she said. "Since she knows the Doctor isn't here, and she knows you're trying to help him, she should help you. But, Sam, you don't have to go off without us. We can help; you can trust us."

Before Sam could say anything, Jack laid his hand on Rose's shoulder. "It's not a matter of trusting us; it's a matter of timelines." He looked up at Sam. "Go on, I understand, well, I think I understand the nature of the problem. I'll explain it to her."

To Al's disbelief, Rose's plan worked. Sam didn't seem too surprised, but Sam had apparently been pumping the other two for information on the ship. The last time Al had heard Sam so excited was when he was explaining the ideas behind Project Quantum Leap.

He hated to do it, but he finally interrupted Sam's description of how the ship was "bigger on the inside". "Sam, we've got a big problem."

Sam took a deep breath. "What do I have to do?"

"In two days, Captain Jack Harkness carries out some orders he's given while on loan from the Torchwood Institute to the British Army." Looking down at the handlink, Al continued. "He takes twelve orphans, twelve kids, and turns them over to a group of aliens in exchange for an anti-virus for an outbreak of influenza."

"What do they do to the kids?" Sam asked, his voice hushed.

"They don't kill them," Al answered, feeling sick. He'd seen the footage from Thames House, seen the child hooked up-- "They keep them alive to use them as drugs." Closing his eyes, he said, "Forty-four years later, about a year ago, they come back. Since we did what they told us to do last time, they expected us to do what they said this time."

"What did they want?"

"Ten percent of the Earth's children," Al said. "The governments were going to do it, too."

"They didn't though, right?" Sam asked.

"No," Al answered. There was no way Sam had of knowing if he told the truth or not; Al hadn't been telling him about any current events, but he was right. "The Director of the Torchwood Institute, Captain Jack Harkness, stopped them. The details are a little fuzzy--Torchwood was almost completely destroyed during this--but Harkness killed the alien on Earth by sending a wave like the one they used to kill the one child that didn't get sent." He swallowed. "He had to use a child to send it; again, the details are fuzzy as to why. The only child available in time, he killed his own grandson to protect the world."

Sam stared at him. "Ziggy does think I'm supposed to stop this, right? Because there's no way I'm not going to try. Two days; Al, I'm right here."

Al nodded. "Right time, right place; the trade-off happens in Scotland. Ziggy's getting the location. The Torchwood computer, which is the only place where this information is any more, hasn't been being updated as well as it could be for the last year. The British government almost succeeded in destroying them."

"How do I do it?" Sam asked.

"Not sure," Al answered him. "We know we can't send them the kids, but they don't send the anti-virus until after the kids are sent up and we need the anti-virus."

"Are you sure?" Sam was frowning.

"Well, yeah," Al said. "If we don't have it, millions will die."

"According to whom?"

"According to . . ." Al looked at him. "How do we know?"

"Is there any of the anti-virus left?"

Al punched the question into the handlink. It took a minute, but Ziggy's answer was discouraging. "No, and there's no record of its composition. Or of the strain of the . . ." He hit the handlink to get the rest of the sentence. "Strain of influenza. We have bupkis, Sam."

"We have to stop the kids from going to the aliens," Sam said, "and we have to get the anti-virus. They won't give us the anti-virus without the kids. If we give them the kids, they'll come back for more." After a moment, Sam asked, "Where's the Jack who's living here now and working for this Torchwood?"

Al punched in the question and waited. "He has an apartment in Cardiff, but he's not there now. No one seems to know where he is. He gets his orders tomorrow afternoon when he calls in."

"Al, can you center yourself on him?" Sam asked.

"Gooshie," Al called, "center me on Harkness." He found himself in the console room of the TARDIS, watching the younger Jack talking with Rose. "The other one!" Nothing changed. Sighing, he said, "Center me on Sam." When he was back with Sam, he shook his head. "Can't do it. Maybe tomorrow."

"I hope so," Sam said.

*

"I like that!" Rose said after Sam had left the control room. "He can trust us; he oughta know that!"

"I think he does," Jack said. He sighed. "But if he tells us the wrong thing, he could cause a paradox. A bad one. Reapers and all."

She'd told Jack about her father's death and the Reapers; he'd told her that he'd always thought they were mythical. Of course, he'd thought the same thing about Time Lords, so there was a lot Jack didn't know; something Rose clung to when he seemed to know so much more than she did. "But isn't that what he does?" she asked. "Y'know, change timelines and all."

"One of the great mysteries of time travel," Jack said, leaning back on the console. "Most of the details of how Project Quantum Leap worked had disappeared by my time, but what we do know is that, because Dr. Beckett started the experiment early, on an impulse apparently, something went wrong." He looked up and sighed. "He spent years Leaping in and out of people and 'putting right what once went wrong'. Because of how things were set up, without doing something pretty drastic, the only person who could contact him was Admiral Albert Calavicchi." Jack grinned. "Who was apparently quite the character. He was a Navy pilot and astronaut, he spent months or years, I don't remember, as a POW in Vietnam, and he was supposed to have quite the eye for the ladies." Rose felt her face heat up. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure he's been enjoying looking at you."

"He's not doing anything pervy, is he?" Rose didn't think Sam would do anything like that; he seemed like a genuinely nice person. An invisible man with an eye for the ladies, though, and one who Sam had said noticed Rose, was a little creepy.

"I doubt it," said Jack. "First, Dr. Beckett switches places, so the Doctor's back at the Project, and you and I both know that the Doctor wouldn't let anyone do anything of the sort. And even if that weren't true, the TARDIS wouldn't let him. Even if both of those weren't true, he was reputed to be desperately in love with his wife and a good, if a little over-protective, father to his four girls. And, finally, the records also show that he spent the years after Dr. Beckett Leaped doing everything within his power to get him back. He isn't going to waste time spying on you in the bath; he's just going to enjoy the view he has while talking with Dr. Beckett."

Rose thought about what Jack had said. "He never got home, did he?"

Jack shook his head. "No. When Admiral Calavicchi died, they lost contact with Dr. Beckett. A week later, the last person he's known to have switched with vanished. And that was the last he was heard of. One of the great tragedies of time travel."

"Doesn't seem fair," Rose said. "He spends all that time helping everyone and he's lost. Didn't anybody try to find him?"

"They did; they have," Jack said. "I'm amazed we've run into him; whether it was intentional or not, there seems to be a time lock on him. No one's ever been able to travel back to meet him. Back to his time, yeah, but they've never been able to get to him or anyone involved with the Project." Jack's grin this time was a little crooked. "Might be just as well. One of the things about my family that my mother was extremely proud of was that we could trace our ancestry back to him."

"He left kids behind?" Rose was shocked. Sam seemed way too nice to go abandoning a family.

"Not exactly." Jack laughed. "Time traveler, remember? And one of the side effects of the process was that his memory was, let's say, impacted. There were lots of things about his past that he couldn't remember, or could only remember part of the time. One of the things he apparently never remembered was that he was married."

"What? What did she think of all this?" Sam was about to get slapped—one of her mother's best.

"She was a scientist, too," Jack said, "and she believed in him. He was one of those amazing men that people just believed in, and then he'd live up to it. She insisted he never be told about her; she was afraid that he might not do what was needed if he remembered her. Anyway, on one of his Leaps, he Leaped right into bed with a young woman." Rose didn't think Jack could help the naughty grin he had. "Some stories say he Leaped right into—"

"I got it," Rose said, half laughing. "So?"

"So, she had a baby, a brilliant little girl she named Sammy Jo. Who went on to become a physicist, who went on to join Project Quantum Leap. And who went on to marry somebody, I don't remember who now, and have a couple of kids. And so on and so on—"

"And eventually you?" Rose asked.

"Yep." Jack's expression was serious again. "Rose, don't pester him. Offer to help, do what you can and I'll do the same, but-- His hair's getting gray; I think this has been going on for a while. He knows what he's doing. If he says we can't help, then we can't."

"Sure we can," Rose insisted. "We can make sure he eats and sleeps and has whatever we can help him get." And he hadn't eaten any of his tea; well, that was easily remedied. Now that she understood better, she could stay out of his way, but she was damned if he'd have to cope all on his own. That was what they did, they helped people, and he was one of the good guys.

Jack smiled. "I'll bet that'll mean more to him than either of us would ever believe."

*

Sam didn't sleep well that night. Children used as drugs, anti-virus held as ransom, millions of lives at stake, either in 1965 or in Al's present, whirled through his head all night. And Al wasn't telling him everything. That wasn't that unusual; Al frequently left out information he thought would upset Sam but not affect what he had to do, but he was almost as frequently wrong.

When he walked out to join the others for breakfast, he found a serious problem with the people around him knowing who he was and what he was doing.

"So," Rose asked him as he poured himself a cup of tea. Coffee was apparently frowned on; Jack made his own but Sam had had a cup. One was enough, and he liked tea well enough. "Did Al figure out what you have to do? What can we do to help?"

Al had been there when Sam woke up this morning. He hadn't said much beyond "Good morning," but now he was shaking his head. "Sam, this is a bad idea. Don't tell her anything!"

Sam glared at Al, but said to Rose, "I'm not really sure. Al's checking some scenarios today; he thinks it'll be a couple of days before he gets an answer."

"Liar," Jack said as he walked into the little kitchen. "Never try to con a con man; we know all the tricks." He smiled patronizingly at Sam as he started his coffee.

"Don't tell him anything!" Al shouted. Sam wished he wouldn't, but he rolled his eyes as Al said, unnecessarily, "We can't do anything to compromise his timeline." When Sam looked at him with his eyebrows raised, Al said, "Well, except where we have to. But he can't know it."

"Sounds interesting," Jack said. "See, Rose, you can see they're having this whole discussion. His friend's telling him all the reasons Sam can't tell us anything. Of course, Sam can't repeat any of them, because then we'd know something about our futures, which would be interfering with our own timelines, which would be bad and cause paradoxes. Sam doesn't need to be told any of this, because he's a genius, and he's already figured it out, but he's trying not to let us know what he's going to have to do so we won't offer to help or anything."

Al gaped at the other man. "How'd he know that?" he asked Sam, wide-eyed.

"Because," Jack seemed to answer Al, but looked in the wrong direction, "I was a Time Agent, so I was trained in dealing with these things. So, we probably can't help directly, but maybe there's something we can do." He looked over at Sam with a smile. "We could send you off nicely relaxed; what do you think about a threesome, Rose?"

Rose smacked him. "I think a Nobel Prize-winning scientist has better things to do than to spend all of his time having sex." She turned to Sam with a big smile. "But I do want to help."

She's way too young, Sam reminded himself. Even if she is pretty. And nice. And smart. And . . . He shook his head. "Sorry. Right now, I don't know. If I think of something, I'll let you know."

Jack gave him a knowing grin as Sam started making breakfast. Before he could get much beyond starting the toast, Al said, "Wait! Got him, and he's right here in the city."

"Sorry, Rose," Sam said as he headed out.

*

The local Jack Harkness was staying at a nice hotel. When Sam knocked on his door, Jack opened it and stared. Before Sam could say anything, Jack punched him, then picked him up and nearly threw him into the room. "What the hell did you do to me?" he asked snarling.

"Huh?" Sam asked. "Nothing."

Al said quietly, "He doesn't know you're Sam Beckett; don't forget, you still look like the Doctor."

Right. "I'm not the Doctor, Jack," Sam said.

"Right," Jack said, his laugh giving Sam chills. "Sure you're not the Doctor. You just look like him and sound like him, but you're not him so you don't have to tell me why the hell you abandoned me on a satellite full of corpses! I thought you'd forgiven me!"

While Sam tried to figure out how to convince him, Al said, "Ask him how long it's been."

Sam glanced up and said, "I'm not the Doctor; I'm Sam Beckett. I spent a little time with you, and Rose. Well, I'm spending it with you now for me. How long has it been for you?"

Jack's face crumbled. "And even if he comes back, I can't ask him now," he said, sounding broken. "It's too soon." He bowed his head for a few minutes. Finally, he looked up. "It's been just under a century since I saw you. And you can't even answer my questions." He sat down. "Go ahead, sit down, tell me what I've fucked up this time."

Sam sat down and looked at the other man. He really didn't look that different. His hair was styled differently, and he was dressed in a military uniform, probably a British one since Sam didn't recognize it, but otherwise, he looked the same. The air of exhaustion and defeat, however, was nothing like the cheerful, teasing man Sam had just left. "It's more what the government's told you to do. You didn't have any reason not to do it."

"You know my orders?" Jack asked. "Tell me, what do I have to do? If you're here, it must be bad."

"Don't tell him the future, Sam," Al reminded him.

"I know," Sam said, rolling his eyes. "You're going to be ordered to deliver twelve orphans to some aliens," he told Jack. "In exchange, they'll give you, or the British government, an anti-virus to a deadly flu epidemic."

"What do they want them for?" Jack asked. His posture had straightened and he was paying full attention, ready for his orders.

"I can't tell you," Sam said. "And it's not that they lie, but what that sets up in the future. You can't hand over the children, but we haven't figured out how to get the anti-virus. And we do need that."

Jack looked thoughtful. "When's this supposed to go down?"

"Tomorrow night."

Standing, Jack began to pace through the room. When the silence had stretched for several minutes, Sam asked, "How can you have been here for almost a hundred years, and look the same as you do in the TARDIS?"

"I don't know," Jack answered, his voice barely above a whisper. "A while after you left, we landed on this GameStation thousands of years in the future. The Earth was under attack by Daleks; they're the race that destroyed the Doctor's people. He was building a device to stop them, but he needed a distraction. That was me."

"Suicide mission," Al murmured.

Jack was looking out the window. "He got Rose home safely but me . . . Well, it's not like I had a home, or like I deserved . . . Anyway, I did my best, slowed them down as much as I could until they killed me. Then, I woke up." He looked over at Sam. "Been doing that ever since. Fought in both World Wars, I've done . . . Not much I'm really proud of, I guess. I'd kill myself, but it's kind of pointless. I come back and have to clean up the mess, so I've mostly stopped doing it."

"Mostly," Sam said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Jack shrugged. "Yeah. This," he held up his left arm, with the bulky device strapped on it, "can travel through time and space. When it works. I set it for Cardiff, early 21st century; I know he goes there. There's this rift he refuels at; thought I'd get him there. I missed, though." Sighing, he said, "Landed in 1869, with it burned out. So, I thought, here's where I'll spend the rest of my life. A few years later, I was shot in the heart. And woke up. So, Dr. Beckett," Jack turned to Sam, his eyes red-rimmed, "I'll do whatever you need me to do. Anything's gotta be better than this living hell."

Sam stared at the other man, his stomach churning. He could hear Al swearing behind him. "When do you get your orders?" he asked, his voice not even sounding like his own.

"Tomorrow afternoon," Jack said. "Guess they don't want to give me time to think about it. Wonder why they wanted me." He closed his eyes. "Guess they figure I'm the best for dirty work."

Sam looked at Jack. He could feel his temper rising; he was no longer sure it was the children he was supposed to save. "Do you have any plans for today?"

Jack smiled. "Not really, but you do. You spend the day dodging Rose's questions and my passes. Which is a real shame, because I know we could have a good time."

Sam grinned back. "I'm sure you could, but I've got to be careful of timelines." He could hear Al choking behind him as Jack grinned back. "I'll see you . . .?"

"Tomorrow about noon," Jack answered. "Guess you go with me. Until then." He shook Sam's hand.

As Sam walked back to the TARDIS, he glared at Al. Before he could say anything, Al said, "Yeah, we help Jack. No one left behind."

Sam exchanged smiles with Al. They weren't nice ones.

**Chapter Four**

"Mind if I sit with you?" The woman asking the question was lovely. No longer young, but she'd been a pretty young woman and age had matured her into beauty.

"Sure." The Doctor shrugged and moved his chair a little to make room for her. "I'm the Doctor and you are?"

She smiled. "I think everyone here knows you're the Doctor," she said. "I'm Donna Elisi, Sam's wife."

The Doctor's interest perked up. In some ways, her story was even more interesting than those of her husband or the Admiral. Left behind, forgotten by her husband, and she still had the strength of character to insist that he not be told, that if he didn't remember there was a reason for it. The Doctor didn't believe it; he'd never believed that some force, whether God, Time, Fate, or something else, was controlling Beckett's Leaps. It was either random chance or a bug in the programming. But that didn't make Donna Elisi any less interesting. He grinned and held out his hand. "Nice to meet you Penelope."

Her smile was more watery than the Doctor had hoped for. "Fortunately, I don't have a swarm of suitors determined to marry me." The smile faded. "I've had some trying to insist I have Sam declared dead. Thank God it hasn't been anyone with any kind of real relationship to him; if his family were to try, I wouldn't be able to fight them."

"I'll see if I can't just bring him home," the Doctor said. "You just keep unraveling that—" He stopped, unable to remember that part of the story.

"It was Odysseus's father's burial shroud," Donna said. Then she chuckled. "I said something about unweaving my father-in-law's burial shroud to Al once early on, and then had to explain what I meant. Al's many things, but a student of Greek literature isn't one of them."

"Oh, well," the Doctor shrugged. "Maybe you can help me, here. This bit of code here, it's pointing to a chip but I can't tell what kind of chip."

Donna leaned over to look. "That looks like the neural chip, the one that lets Al communicate with Sam. Why? What's it doing?"

The Doctor's expression didn't change, but he could feel the joy of solving a problem and saving lives start. If it just took long enough, he might be able to change something in Donna's life. Something for good. "Well, y'see, it looks like in addition to what it's supposed to do, it's set up an intentionality circuit." He waited; this woman was intelligent and she was intimately connected with the project.

"Intention—" She stared at the Doctor. "And the intention is?"

"Considerin' what I know about this little project of your husband's, I'd say the intention is to keep going until everything that's wrong is put right. Good heart, but he needed somebody who could understand it to debug his code." He grinned. "Good thing he's got me."

Donna looked at him. After a minute, she grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. "Good thing, but you're explaining everything you're doing."

It was a real shame he didn't have his TARDIS with him, the Doctor thought. Donna Elisi would have made a wonderful Companion.

*

Al stormed into the control room, looking for that damn alien. He was pouring over the circuitry, muttering about an "intentionality circuit", whatever that was. "What the hell--"

Before he could finish, the Doctor shouted, "Enough! Do you want Reapers here? Do you want to destroy the universe? Do you have any idea what forces you're playing with here?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You stupid apes are playing with timelines. Changing timelines." The Doctor took a deep breath. "Beckett's a genius and no two ways about it, but he's years, and you don't wanna know how many, ahead of his time. And you're good, but you're not a genius and you're not a Time Lord and you have no idea what you're playing with."

"And if someone gets inconvenient, you just leave them behind?" Al shouted.

"No," the Doctor stated, simply and quietly. "But when people travel with me, it happens. Sometimes, it's by accident and sometimes it's because that's what has to be. And we have to stop this conversation, now." He shook his head. "Can I help you without causing a paradox?"

"Probably not," Al sighed. "Stay out of trouble, would you? I have more research to do."

As he left the control room, he realized that Donna had been there with the Doctor and that, for the first time in what felt like forever, there was hope in her eyes. If that alien was raising false hope, Al would find him and make him pay. Donna was just barely hanging on; she wouldn't last too much longer.

He stormed into his office and collapsed into his chair. In front of him was the photograph of Beth and the girls. Because he was in the center of things here at Project Quantum Leap, he could remember a little of what his life had been before Sam had started Leaping. Before Sam had gone back to Beth and convinced her to wait, that Al was alive and would come back to her. That Al still loved her. He could still remember, dimly, what it had been like when she hadn't waited. And nothing Al could do would bring Sam back. All he could do was to keep Sam alive, and Leaping. And hoping. Al was real good at hoping.

He had Ziggy run the numbers every way he could think of. Somehow, they had to keep the kids off that alien ship, but get the anti-virus. Every time, the same numbers came back: if the kids weren't sent to the ship, they wouldn't get the anti-virus and millions of people would die. And the consequences of that were incalculable.

*

Hoping that Rose and Jack had gone back out again, Sam was disappointed to find both of them in the console room, clearly waiting for him. "Did you do it?" Rose asked as soon as he walked in. "Did you put it right?"

"It'll happen tomorrow night," Sam said.

Rose frowned. "What's wrong? We've got a whole day; we can figure it out."

"Al's working on it," Sam told her. "You can't."

"Are we crossing timelines?" Jack asked. His eyes were sharp and calculating. "Y'know, there's ways around that. This one time, my old partner--"

Sam shook his head. "I need to think," he said. "Could I get some paper and something to write with? I need to do some calculations."

Jack's eyebrows rose at that, but Rose ran to get Sam a stack of paper and half a dozen pens and pencils. Sam could see her disappointment when he closed the door on her, but he knew better than to let her stay with him. The temptation to tell her what was happening, what was going to happen, was too great, and from there, it would be a short step to telling Jack. Which he absolutely couldn't do.

He spent the day trying to figure a way out of the problem. Without enough information on the influenza, he couldn't even begin to think about the direction an anti-virus would take. Even when he'd been studying medicine, that was a difficult proposition at best, and frequently impossible at worst. And how could he force an alien to give up that anti-virus when they could kill by releasing their own viruses. Al had explained how they'd done that when the Torchwood operatives had tried to stop them the last time. Hundreds of people had died and nothing had been accomplished, not until later.

It was late when Sam heard the knock on the door. Rose smiled at him when he opened it. "Just cheese toasties and some tea," she said, bringing the tray into the room. Setting it down on the desk, she asked, "Is it always this tough, or is this just a bad one?"

"They're getting harder," Sam said. "I was warned that they would, but there's some times I'm not sure I can manage what has to be done. And I think I've given up on ever getting home."

"Don't," she said, grabbing his hand. "One thing I've found traveling with the Doctor is that you can't solve anything if you've given up." She shrugged. "If there's anything I can do to help, you just let me know, but don't you give up."

Sam smiled at her as he ate his dinner. "Thanks, Rose," he said. "You make a good friend."

"Get some rest," she said.

After another restless night with little sleep, and a breakfast that Sam couldn't taste, he turned to Rose and Jack as they saw him out. He gave Rose a hug and kissed her cheek. "It's been nice spending time with you," he said. "Take care of your Doctor, and let him take care of you."

Rose smiled up at him. "You're sure we can't help?" When Sam shook his head, she kissed his cheek again. "Safe trip."

"Safe landings," Jack said. Instead of shaking Sam's hand, like he'd been planning, Jack wrapped him up in a hug. "And if you don't know where you are, may you always know how to leave." That got a bark of laughter from Al, who had been standing silently next to him. "Don't worry. Rose and I had a long talk last night. We won't follow you but, if you need us, we'll be here. Until you Leap again that is." He straightened up and nodded. "Dr. Beckett, it's been an honor to meet and talk with you. And where's the Admiral?" When Sam pointed to Al, Jack stood to attention and saluted. "Admiral, sir!"

Al saluted back and said to Sam, "Come on, Sam; time to go."

At the hotel, Jack had packed and checked out of the hotel. "It's probably best if they don't see you," he said. "I'll stop a mile or so away; from what you've said, you'll have enough time to get into place. Any plans?"

Sam shook his head. "I'm hoping something will come to me when we get there."

They drove in silence. Sam didn't know what to say, and Jack was clearly thinking. They finally stopped. "We're close now," Jack said. "Come on, I packed you something to eat." He got out of the jeep with Sam and led him around to the back. Sam leaned in to look in the back, and everything went black.

*

Al stared at Harkness in shock. He'd knocked Sam out cleanly, with one blow. He moved away from the road, far enough that no one would see them, and tied Sam to a tree. Al started shouting when he realized what Harkness was going to do, but then Harkness started speaking and Al went quiet. "Admiral, I'm assuming you're there. I've been over this and over this and there's only one way I can see that this will work." He stood. "I'm guessing that Dr. Beckett was supposed to Leap into me. He'd have assumed that this was either a suicide mission or that I had another way out. It's both, you know. Just before they take the kids, I send them running and have them take me instead. Whatever they need those kids for, I should be able to do as well. That'll get us the anti-virus." He sighed. "I wish I could give you a message for the Doctor, but it's too soon in his timeline; it'd cause a paradox." The blue of his eyes was brighter than usual. "If this doesn't work . . . I don't know what to tell you to do; this is the only plan I've been able to come up with." He stood up. "Good luck." He walked to his jeep and left.

It took Sam over an hour to wake up. Al had followed Harkness, but kept bouncing back every few minutes to check on Sam. He heard the woman, Ellen Hunt, give Harkness his instructions. "Doesn't care." Why should he? Al thought. Looking at his handlink and thinking about the files he'd read, all of the suicide assignments Harkness had been given because he couldn't die. Why should he care?

When Sam finally woke up, it was several minutes before Al bounced back to him. "Good," he said, "you're awake. First, you've gotta get untied."

"What's going on?" Sam asked, bewildered, as he tried to get some movement within the ropes. After years of being tied up, by experts and amateurs, he could tell that Jack was one of the experts. "He agreed with us that something had to be done. Why--"

"He's got this crazy plan that he's going to get the aliens to take him," Al said. "Try moving your thumb under that loop. Ziggy gives it less than a ten percent chance of working but, because he can't see or hear me, I can't tell him that. So, I couldn't stop him."

"Where is he?" Sam asked. "And what's Ziggy saying about our chances?"

"That's the weird thing," Al said pounding on the handlink. "The possibility of success has been climbing since he knocked you out, but the chances of his plan working are just over nil. I don't get it."

"Check on him again." Sam said.

Al went back to bouncing between the two, advising Sam on how to undo his ropes and watching as Harkness got to the kids. "Kids," Harkness said when he was on the bus, "you're supposed to come with me. I'm supposed to take you and give you to a bunch of aliens and nobody knows what will happen next. Do you want to do that?"

The kids looked scared and confused. One boy kept shaking his head. "No. No. Don't make me go."

Harkness walked over and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Sshhh. That's not what we're going to do. Now, I need you to be really brave and come with me. You're going to go almost all the way, but when I tell you to run, you run like hell, got it? Run away from the bus, away from everybody. They're not going to kill scared kids. Are you with me?" He looked around at the kids, who were staring at him wide-eyed. "You're going to run and I'm going to let them take me." When none of the kids, even the boy who was still shaking his head, looked convinced, he said, "Look at my uniform; I'm in the RAF. This is my job; this is what I do. So, can you do that?"

The one boy had gone quiet, and he pulled a couple of the other kids near him and whispered. Al couldn't get close enough to hear them; neither could Harkness. He bounced back to Sam, who was starting to make some progress with the ropes. "Sam, you have to hurry. They're about to go and you're still over a mile away." He looked down at the handlink. "And Ziggy's saying we're up to 92 percent. What is she on?"

He bounced back to Harkness, who was leading the kids out of the bus. The kids followed him, just like they were supposed to. Knowing it was pointless, Al kept shouting at Harkness. None of the kids were young enough to hear him; no one could hear him and all Al could see was everything happening all over again.

They got to the edge of the light and Harkness said, "Run!" For a moment, everyone froze. Harkness looked around and singled out the one boy who'd spoken before. "Go on, go!" Still, none of the children moved.

There were soldiers standing nearby; Al could hear them readying their weapons, waiting for the order to shoot. Al held his breath as Harkness closed his eyes for a minute, and then opened them, took a deep breath and stepped into the light. He kept walking until he was in the center of it, but nothing happened. Glancing down at the handlink, Al saw the chance of success: 96 percent. He pounded on it, but it just went up: 96.3 percent. That they would get the anti-virus and that the aliens wouldn't come back. It made no sense.

The children slowly began to link hands. Harkness turned to them and shouted. "Run! Get out of here!" The children looked at each other. A few of them looked up at the light, and they all began to move toward the center. They got close to the center, and the one boy, the leader said something to Harkness. He stared for a moment, and sagged. Watching over his shoulder, he walked back toward the bus. Once he stepped completely out of the light, the children were gone.

"What did you think you were doing?" Hunt demanded as she walked up to Harkness. Out of the corner of his eye, Al saw Sam crouch behind a jeep to see what was going on. He was breathing hard, clearly having run hard to get here, but not quite in time. Still, the handlink was at 98.2 percent.

Harkness looked up at the sky over where the children had disappeared. "A source told me we were going to be double-crossed. It was too late to completely stop things--"

Hunt didn't let him finish. "We're just lucky you didn't queer things for us. We just got the formula for the anti-virus. Even if you were a fool, they kept their--"

There was a ball of fire in the sky, directly over where the children had disappeared. Everyone stared. As the fire faded, Hunt asked, "What do you think happened?"

Harkness was shaking his head, his eyes were wide. "No idea."

Al walked over to Sam. "They did it," he said. The handlink was giving him the new history. Harkness's personal history didn't change that much, but the 456 never returned. Steven Carter was still alive, a bright, happy child. Steven's mother, Alice Carter, hadn't shut her father, Jack Harkness, out of her life. Harkness's lover, the man who had died in the original history, was also still alive, and it looked like he might be trying to reconcile Alice with her father, just as he was doing the same with his own family. Somehow, it had all worked out.

Sam looked over at Al, and snuck into the back of Harkness's jeep. Everyone was still looking at where the ship had been.

Once the fire was gone, Harkness turned to Hunt. "Am I going to have any trouble over this? Or will we just write it off?"

Hunt looked down at the formula she was holding. "As long as this works, I'll write it up that this mission was a complete success." She looked up at Harkness and scowled. "And hope I never have to work with you again."

Harkness snorted. "Likewise, sweetheart." He got into his jeep and drove off.

He drove for nearly an hour before he pulled off the road and turned around. "Are you still Dr. Beckett?" he asked.

Sam stood up and stretched. "Yeah. Not quite sure why. Not really sure why I was here at all."

Harkness shrugged. "As a catalyst, I'd say. If you and Al hadn't been here to tell me what would happen in the future, I would have turned them over without a second thought. If you don't know what happens next, it doesn't sound like such a bad deal. Twelve kids for millions of lives? It's not a hard calculation. And I'd have had them doing exactly what I told them to, too."

"Except for Clement McDonald," Al said. "You didn't see him, Sam; he was so scared but, when he realized what was happening, he got those kids together. I'll bet he's the one who blew up the ship."

Sam repeated Al's words and Harkness nodded. "Probably." He shook his head. "What a waste. Come on, I'll drive you back to Edinburgh."

"Sam," Al said, "I'll be back. I'm going to try to get the Doctor back into the Waiting Room; tell him he's about to go home. If I don't get back before you Leap, I'll see you after."

Back in the control room, he met the Doctor, who was grinning manically at him. "They told me it worked," he said happily, "whatever it was. And I fixed that stupid circuit that your Dr. Beckett put in. No wonder he keeps Leaping; that intentionality circuit would keep someone like him trying to save the world. Y'can't, y'know. Just little pieces of it, sometimes."

Al led the alien back to the Waiting Room. "Little pieces are good enough for me." Just as they got back to the Waiting Room, Sam Leaped.

**Epilogue**

Rose couldn't explain how she knew, but she was sure of it.

She ran up to him and gave him a big hug. "Welcome back, Doctor. So, how was Project Quantum Leap?"

"Fantastic!" he said, with a big grin. "Amazing place, and some of the best minds of their time. You'd've loved it," he said to Jack, who was walking over to greet the Doctor.

"I'm sure I would have," Jack said, "and this is so strange. I can feel history rearranging itself in my head. You changed it."

"Yep, I did," the Doctor said. "Stupid ape, playing with things he doesn't understand, but I put it right."

Jack looked over at Rose. "Sam Beckett is acknowledged to be one of the most brilliant human beings ever," he said, his voice wry. "Only the Doctor would call him a stupid ape."

The Doctor's smile turned a little crooked. "The chip that enabled he and Calavicchi to communicate with one another? Among other things, it was an intentionality circuit. He was Leaping himself all along."

"I was taught that those are always unstable," Jack said, his eyes going wide. "But he Leaped for years. How'd they keep it stable."

Rose raised her hand. "Wait a minute. Intentionality circuit? What's that? And can we get Sam home?"

"Should have done," the Doctor said, answering her last question first. "An intentionality circuit -- The programming had Beckett Leaping randomly through time and space in his own lifetime. The plan, what was supposed to happen, was that he'd make a Leap, collect information, and come home. The intentionality circuit that Beckett added to the programming subconsciously included an additional provision: he could only come home when everything was put right." The Doctor shook his head. "Impossible to do, of course, but it fits with what's known about the man. And the people who worked with him." The Doctor grinned. "Centuries too early, but what a team!"

"He's home safe?" Rose asked again. She'd liked Sam; he'd taken on what seemed like an impossible job and he'd stayed nice while he did it.

"No one really knows," Jack said. "After the project, he stayed out of the public eye. But there's stories about him as an old man, still researching and theorizing about time." Jack grinned. "And space. He was supposed to have become fascinated by the idea of dimensional transcendence."

The Doctor put his hand on Rose's shoulder and smiled at her. "I think I got him home. I hope so." Then he turned back to the console. "So, should we try for the Summer of Love again, or go on random?"

Rose and Jack exchanged a look. "Random!"

*

Al sighed. Here we go again.

The Visitor looked around the Waiting Room wide-eyed. He looked down at himself, then at the room again, and then at Al. Then, he fainted.

This happened often enough that there was a standard protocol. He keyed into the intercom, "Dr. Beeks, please report to the Waiting Room. We have a new Visitor."

As he passed Beeks, she stopped. "Fainted?" she asked. Al nodded and she said, "There's some people, big-time VIPs that have made it to the control room."

"What?" Al asked. "They don't have the clearance! I approve all clearances into the secure areas of the project and I haven't cleared anyone new lately!" He stormed into the control room and glared, snapping, "Who the hell are you?"

Standing before him were three people. A young woman with long dark hair and a gap between her teeth, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, smiled at him. The young man beside her, tall, dark-haired and wearing a perfectly tailored suit, nodded at him with a Mona Lisa smile. It wasn't either of them Al was staring at. For the moment, the third member of the group had his back to Al. He was also tall and dark-haired, wearing an RAF greatcoat. When he heard Al, he turned around. Al gaped as the familiar voice said, "We're Torchwood; we have clearance for everything."

It was rare that Al got to see the people Sam had helped, but not unknown. He gave Harkness a big smile and was stepping forward to shake his hand when he heard another familiar voice behind him. "Al, I'm home. I made it home."

Al whirled and stared. Then he shouted at Gooshie. "Check it out!"

"Er, I think he's convinced Dr. Elisi."

Al turned around. Donna was in Sam's arms, just holding each other. Donna was crying and Sam didn't look much better. They were exactly where they belonged. He couldn't wait to tell Beth the fantastic news.

Grinning, Al told Gooshie, "Then get, well, everyone who should be here." As he heard Jack Harkness laughing delightedly behind him, he hugged his best friend for the first time in nearly fifteen years. "Welcome home, Sam. Welcome home."

Fin

12/6/09


End file.
